The chapters in this volume aim to advance the discussion of the role of the a priori in philosophy by addressing four sets of issues. The first is whether intuitions provide evidence for ...
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The chapters in this volume aim to advance the discussion of the role of the a priori in philosophy by addressing four sets of issues. The first is whether intuitions provide evidence for philosophical theories, whether that evidence is a priori, and whether the results of experimental philosophy affect the evidential or a priori status of intuitions. The second is whether there are explanations of the a priori and what range of propositions can be justified and known a priori. The third is whether a priori justified beliefs are needed in order to avoid some skeptical worries. The fourth is whether certain recent challenges to the existence or significance of the a priori are successful.Less

The A Priori in Philosophy

Published in print: 2013-09-12

The chapters in this volume aim to advance the discussion of the role of the a priori in philosophy by addressing four sets of issues. The first is whether intuitions provide evidence for philosophical theories, whether that evidence is a priori, and whether the results of experimental philosophy affect the evidential or a priori status of intuitions. The second is whether there are explanations of the a priori and what range of propositions can be justified and known a priori. The third is whether a priori justified beliefs are needed in order to avoid some skeptical worries. The fourth is whether certain recent challenges to the existence or significance of the a priori are successful.

This book shows how the centerpiece of the Enlightenment—society as the symbol of collective human life and as the fundamental domain of human practice—was primarily composed and animated by its most ...
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This book shows how the centerpiece of the Enlightenment—society as the symbol of collective human life and as the fundamental domain of human practice—was primarily composed and animated by its most ambivalent figure: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Displaying this new society as an evolving field of interdependence, the book traces the emergence and moral significance of dependence itself within Rousseau's encounters with a variety of discourses of order, including theology, natural philosophy, and music. Underpinning this whole scene we discover a modernizing conception of the human Will, one that runs far deeper than Rousseau's most famous trope, the “general Will.”Less

Abandoned to Ourselves

Peter A. Meyers

Published in print: 2013-07-23

This book shows how the centerpiece of the Enlightenment—society as the symbol of collective human life and as the fundamental domain of human practice—was primarily composed and animated by its most ambivalent figure: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Displaying this new society as an evolving field of interdependence, the book traces the emergence and moral significance of dependence itself within Rousseau's encounters with a variety of discourses of order, including theology, natural philosophy, and music. Underpinning this whole scene we discover a modernizing conception of the human Will, one that runs far deeper than Rousseau's most famous trope, the “general Will.”

This book argues that Roe v. Wade's six‐month time span for abortion “on demand” polarized the American public, and obscured alternatives that could have gained broad public support. As ...
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This book argues that Roe v. Wade's six‐month time span for abortion “on demand” polarized the American public, and obscured alternatives that could have gained broad public support. As a result, a predictable bureaucratic backlash to legal abortion has ensued that has placed legal abortion services out of reach for women who are poor, young, or live far from urban centers. Explores the origins of Roe's regulatory scheme and demonstrates that it resulted from concerns that have considerably less relevance in today's medical context. Endorses regulatory guidelines, first proposed by the American Bar Association in 1972, which would give states more flexibility in setting the time span for unrestricted abortion. Argues that the standard civil liberty defenses of abortion (i.e. privacy, involuntary servitude, self‐defense, religious freedom) offer better support for these guidelines than for Roe’s scheme, and that a time span for nontherapeutic abortions shorter than six months can both protect women's interests and advance important public interests. The book also critiques the individualism of “pro‐choice” post‐Roe abortion rights campaigns for failing to articulate how women's reproductive options depend on access to public services and resources and not only on being let alone. Urges reproductive rights activists to emphasize the interconnections both between social responsibility and respect for human life, and between the Samaritan obligations of pregnant women and those of other citizens. Explores feminist artwork on abortion to extrapolate tools for refocusing the abortion debate on these issues and for contesting the extremist tactics of the “pro‐life” movement.Less

Abortion and Social Responsibility : Depolarizing the Debate

Laurie Shrage

Published in print: 2003-02-13

This book argues that Roev. Wade's six‐month time span for abortion “on demand” polarized the American public, and obscured alternatives that could have gained broad public support. As a result, a predictable bureaucratic backlash to legal abortion has ensued that has placed legal abortion services out of reach for women who are poor, young, or live far from urban centers. Explores the origins of Roe's regulatory scheme and demonstrates that it resulted from concerns that have considerably less relevance in today's medical context. Endorses regulatory guidelines, first proposed by the American Bar Association in 1972, which would give states more flexibility in setting the time span for unrestricted abortion. Argues that the standard civil liberty defenses of abortion (i.e. privacy, involuntary servitude, self‐defense, religious freedom) offer better support for these guidelines than for Roe’s scheme, and that a time span for nontherapeutic abortions shorter than six months can both protect women's interests and advance important public interests. The book also critiques the individualism of “pro‐choice” post‐Roe abortion rights campaigns for failing to articulate how women's reproductive options depend on access to public services and resources and not only on being let alone. Urges reproductive rights activists to emphasize the interconnections both between social responsibility and respect for human life, and between the Samaritan obligations of pregnant women and those of other citizens. Explores feminist artwork on abortion to extrapolate tools for refocusing the abortion debate on these issues and for contesting the extremist tactics of the “pro‐life” movement.

This volume addresses foundational issues concerning the nature of first-personal, or de se thought and how such thoughts are communicated. One of the question addressed is whether there is anything ...
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This volume addresses foundational issues concerning the nature of first-personal, or de se thought and how such thoughts are communicated. One of the question addressed is whether there is anything distinctive about de se thought or whether it can be subsumed under broader phenomena. Many have held that de se thought motivates a revision to traditional accounts of content or positing special ways of accessing such contents. Gottlob Frege famously held that first-person thoughts involve a subject being “presented to himself in a particular and primitive way, in which he is presented to no-one else.” However, as Frege also noted, this raises many puzzling questions when we consider how we are able to communicate such thoughts. Is there indeed something special about first-person thought such that it requires a primitive mode of presentation that cannot be grasped by others? If there really is something special about first-person thought, what happens when I communicate this thought to you? Do you come to believe the very thing that I believe? Or is my first-person belief only entertained by me? If it is only entertained by me, how does it relate to what you come to believe? It is these questions that the volume addresses and seeks to answer.Less

About Oneself : De Se Thought and Communication

Published in print: 2016-01-01

This volume addresses foundational issues concerning the nature of first-personal, or de se thought and how such thoughts are communicated. One of the question addressed is whether there is anything distinctive about de se thought or whether it can be subsumed under broader phenomena. Many have held that de se thought motivates a revision to traditional accounts of content or positing special ways of accessing such contents. Gottlob Frege famously held that first-person thoughts involve a subject being “presented to himself in a particular and primitive way, in which he is presented to no-one else.” However, as Frege also noted, this raises many puzzling questions when we consider how we are able to communicate such thoughts. Is there indeed something special about first-person thought such that it requires a primitive mode of presentation that cannot be grasped by others? If there really is something special about first-person thought, what happens when I communicate this thought to you? Do you come to believe the very thing that I believe? Or is my first-person belief only entertained by me? If it is only entertained by me, how does it relate to what you come to believe? It is these questions that the volume addresses and seeks to answer.

Aboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness features of particular mental states. ...
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Aboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. Attempts have even been made, in library science and information theory, to operationalize the notion. However, it has played no real role in philosophical semantics, which is surprising. This is the first book to examine through a philosophical lens the role of subject matter in meaning. A long-standing tradition sees meaning as truth conditions, to be specified by listing the scenarios in which a sentence is true. Nothing is said about the principle of selection—about what in a scenario gets it onto the list. Subject matter is the missing link here. A sentence is true because of how matters stand where its subject matter is concerned. This book maintains that this is not just a feature of subject matter, but its essence. One indicates what a sentence is about by mapping out logical space according to its changing ways of being true or false. The notion of content that results—directed content—is brought to bear on a range of philosophical topics, including ontology, verisimilitude, knowledge, loose talk, assertive content, and philosophical methodology. The book represents a major advance in semantics and the philosophy of language.Less

Aboutness

Stephen Yablo

Published in print: 2014-05-11

Aboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. Attempts have even been made, in library science and information theory, to operationalize the notion. However, it has played no real role in philosophical semantics, which is surprising. This is the first book to examine through a philosophical lens the role of subject matter in meaning. A long-standing tradition sees meaning as truth conditions, to be specified by listing the scenarios in which a sentence is true. Nothing is said about the principle of selection—about what in a scenario gets it onto the list. Subject matter is the missing link here. A sentence is true because of how matters stand where its subject matter is concerned. This book maintains that this is not just a feature of subject matter, but its essence. One indicates what a sentence is about by mapping out logical space according to its changing ways of being true or false. The notion of content that results—directed content—is brought to bear on a range of philosophical topics, including ontology, verisimilitude, knowledge, loose talk, assertive content, and philosophical methodology. The book represents a major advance in semantics and the philosophy of language.

Abstract objects such as properties, propositions, numbers, degrees, and expression types are at the centre of many philosophical debates. Philosophers and linguists alike generally hold the view ...
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Abstract objects such as properties, propositions, numbers, degrees, and expression types are at the centre of many philosophical debates. Philosophers and linguists alike generally hold the view that natural language allows rather generously for reference to abstracts objects of the various sorts. The project of this book is to investigate in a fully systematic way whether and how natural language permits reference to abstract objects. For that purpose, the book will introduce a great range of new linguistic generalizations and make systematic use of recent semantic and syntactic theories. It will arrive at an ontology that differs rather radically from the one that philosophers, but also linguists, generally take natural language to involve. Reference to abstract objects is much more marginal than is generally thought. Instead of making reference to abstract objects, natural language, with its more central terms and constructions, makes reference to (concrete) particulars, especially tropes, as well as pluralities of particulars. Reference to abstract objects is generally reserved for syntactically complex and less central terms of the sort the property of being wise or the number eight.Less

Abstract Objects and the Semantics of Natural Language

Friederike Moltmann

Published in print: 2013-04-28

Abstract objects such as properties, propositions, numbers, degrees, and expression types are at the centre of many philosophical debates. Philosophers and linguists alike generally hold the view that natural language allows rather generously for reference to abstracts objects of the various sorts. The project of this book is to investigate in a fully systematic way whether and how natural language permits reference to abstract objects. For that purpose, the book will introduce a great range of new linguistic generalizations and make systematic use of recent semantic and syntactic theories. It will arrive at an ontology that differs rather radically from the one that philosophers, but also linguists, generally take natural language to involve. Reference to abstract objects is much more marginal than is generally thought. Instead of making reference to abstract objects, natural language, with its more central terms and constructions, makes reference to (concrete) particulars, especially tropes, as well as pluralities of particulars. Reference to abstract objects is generally reserved for syntactically complex and less central terms of the sort the property of being wise or the number eight.

The book provides an original investigation of historical and systematic aspects of the notions of abstraction and infinity and their interaction. The notion of abstraction in question is that ...
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The book provides an original investigation of historical and systematic aspects of the notions of abstraction and infinity and their interaction. The notion of abstraction in question is that related to the use of abstraction principles in neo-logicism. The most familiar abstraction principle in this context is Hume’s Principle. Hume’s Principle says that two concepts have the same number if and only if the objects falling under each one of them can be put in one–one correspondence. Chapter 1 shows that abstraction principles were quite widespread in the mathematical practice that preceded Frege’s discussion of them. The second chapter provides the first contextual analysis of Frege’s discussion of abstraction principles in section 64 of the Grundlagen; the second part investigates the foundational reflection on abstraction principles in the Peanosets not by using school and Russell. Chapter 3 discusses a novel approach to measuring the size of infinite sets known as the theory of numerosities. This theory assigns numerosities to infinite sets not by using one–one correspondence but by preserving the part–whole principle, namely the principle according to which if a set A is strictly included in a set B, then the numerosity of A is strictly smaller than the numerosity of B. Mancosu shows how this new development leads to deep mathematical, historical, and philosophical problems. Chapter 4 brings the previous strands together by offering some surprising novel perspectives on neo-logicism.Less

Abstraction and Infinity

Paolo Mancosu

Published in print: 2016-12-15

The book provides an original investigation of historical and systematic aspects of the notions of abstraction and infinity and their interaction. The notion of abstraction in question is that related to the use of abstraction principles in neo-logicism. The most familiar abstraction principle in this context is Hume’s Principle. Hume’s Principle says that two concepts have the same number if and only if the objects falling under each one of them can be put in one–one correspondence. Chapter 1 shows that abstraction principles were quite widespread in the mathematical practice that preceded Frege’s discussion of them. The second chapter provides the first contextual analysis of Frege’s discussion of abstraction principles in section 64 of the Grundlagen; the second part investigates the foundational reflection on abstraction principles in the Peanosets not by using school and Russell. Chapter 3 discusses a novel approach to measuring the size of infinite sets known as the theory of numerosities. This theory assigns numerosities to infinite sets not by using one–one correspondence but by preserving the part–whole principle, namely the principle according to which if a set A is strictly included in a set B, then the numerosity of A is strictly smaller than the numerosity of B. Mancosu shows how this new development leads to deep mathematical, historical, and philosophical problems. Chapter 4 brings the previous strands together by offering some surprising novel perspectives on neo-logicism.

The collection contains an extensive introduction and 16 original papers on the philosophical and mathematical aspects of Abstractionism—a position in the philosophy of mathematics which is a ...
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The collection contains an extensive introduction and 16 original papers on the philosophical and mathematical aspects of Abstractionism—a position in the philosophy of mathematics which is a development of Frege’s original Logicism. The collection is structured as follows: After an extensive editors’ introduction to the topic of abstractionism, part II contains five contributions that deal with semantics and metaontology of Abstractionism, as well as the so-called Caesar Problem. Part III collects four contributions that discuss abstractionist epistemology, focusing on the idea of implicit definitions and non-evidential warrants (entitlements) to account for a priori mathematical knowledge. Four papers in part IV concern the mathematics of Abstractionism, in particular the issue of impredicativity, the Bad Company objection, and the question of abstractionist set theory. The last section contains three contributions that discuss Frege’s application constraint within an abstractionist setting.Less

Abstractionism : Essays in Philosophy of Mathematics

Published in print: 2016-12-08

The collection contains an extensive introduction and 16 original papers on the philosophical and mathematical aspects of Abstractionism—a position in the philosophy of mathematics which is a development of Frege’s original Logicism. The collection is structured as follows: After an extensive editors’ introduction to the topic of abstractionism, part II contains five contributions that deal with semantics and metaontology of Abstractionism, as well as the so-called Caesar Problem. Part III collects four contributions that discuss abstractionist epistemology, focusing on the idea of implicit definitions and non-evidential warrants (entitlements) to account for a priori mathematical knowledge. Four papers in part IV concern the mathematics of Abstractionism, in particular the issue of impredicativity, the Bad Company objection, and the question of abstractionist set theory. The last section contains three contributions that discuss Frege’s application constraint within an abstractionist setting.

People rely on reason to think about and navigate the abstract world of human relations in much the same way they rely on maps to study and traverse the physical world. Starting from that simple ...
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People rely on reason to think about and navigate the abstract world of human relations in much the same way they rely on maps to study and traverse the physical world. Starting from that simple observation, this book offers a critique of the way human thought and action have become deeply immersed in the rhetoric of cartography and how this cartographic reasoning allows the powerful to map out other people's lives. Comprising a reading of Western philosophy, religion, and mythology that draws on early maps and atlases; Plato, Immanuel Kant, and Ludwig Wittgenstein; and Thomas Pynchon, Gilgamesh, and Marcel Duchamp, the book is itself a minimalist guide to the terrain of Western culture. It roams widely but always returns to the problems inherent in reason, to question the outdated assumptions and fixed ideas that thinking cartographically entails.Less

Abysmal : A Critique of Cartographic Reason

Gunnar Olsson

Published in print: 2007-03-01

People rely on reason to think about and navigate the abstract world of human relations in much the same way they rely on maps to study and traverse the physical world. Starting from that simple observation, this book offers a critique of the way human thought and action have become deeply immersed in the rhetoric of cartography and how this cartographic reasoning allows the powerful to map out other people's lives. Comprising a reading of Western philosophy, religion, and mythology that draws on early maps and atlases; Plato, Immanuel Kant, and Ludwig Wittgenstein; and Thomas Pynchon, Gilgamesh, and Marcel Duchamp, the book is itself a minimalist guide to the terrain of Western culture. It roams widely but always returns to the problems inherent in reason, to question the outdated assumptions and fixed ideas that thinking cartographically entails.

This book introduces Immanuel Kant's masterwork, the Critique of Pure Reason, from a ‘relaxed’ problem-oriented perspective which treats Kant as an especially insightful practising philosopher, from ...
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This book introduces Immanuel Kant's masterwork, the Critique of Pure Reason, from a ‘relaxed’ problem-oriented perspective which treats Kant as an especially insightful practising philosopher, from whom we still have much to learn, intelligently and creatively responding to significant questions that transcend his work's historical setting. The book's main project is to command a clear view of how Kant understands various perennial problems, how he attempts to resolve them, and to what extent he succeeds. The constructive portions of the First Critique—the Aesthetic and Analytic—are explored in detail; the Paralogisms and Antinomies more briefly. At the same time the book is an introduction to the challenges of reading the text of Kant's work and, to that end, selectively adopts a more rigorous historical and exegetical stance.Less

Accessing Kant : A relaxed introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason

Jay F. Rosenberg

Published in print: 2005-09-22

This book introduces Immanuel Kant's masterwork, the Critique of Pure Reason, from a ‘relaxed’ problem-oriented perspective which treats Kant as an especially insightful practising philosopher, from whom we still have much to learn, intelligently and creatively responding to significant questions that transcend his work's historical setting. The book's main project is to command a clear view of how Kant understands various perennial problems, how he attempts to resolve them, and to what extent he succeeds. The constructive portions of the First Critique—the Aesthetic and Analytic—are explored in detail; the Paralogisms and Antinomies more briefly. At the same time the book is an introduction to the challenges of reading the text of Kant's work and, to that end, selectively adopts a more rigorous historical and exegetical stance.